Greetings, Tiger

Some fragmented thoughts on the Lunar New Year, Tahitian honey, the lessons of the kitchen and the garden, and the future of American evangelicalism

Saturday, February 5
East Sandwich, Massachusetts

Happy Lunar New Year, gentle reader!

Here we are, in the first days of the Year of the Tiger. This year, I didn’t do all the things that I should have done to retain my Good Chinese Person card. I didn’t clean the house top to bottom. I didn’t buy any new clothes. I haven’t yet sent my nephews their red envelopes. Because I was on a reporting trip, I didn’t cook a proper Chinese New Year dinner. But I did call my parents to pay my respects, I contacted other loved ones to greet them, and I even managed to visit the graves of three of my grandparents while I was in California earlier this week. So I’d give myself a B/B-. And even though a B/B- is basically an F on the official Chinese Parents’ Grading Scale, in this messy Western year of 2022, we’ll just call it good.

Traditionally, my people are at once superstitious and pragmatic. Over the millennia, the Chinese pantheon flourished as ancient people sought to make sense of their circumstances and summon help from beyond. The Chinese zodiac was an attempt to establish pattern and possibility. Through the symbolism of the horse or the rabbit, the story of the dragon or the dog, they constructed a semblance of order amidst life’s seeming chaos. Each creature brought its own dangers and risks, its own possibilities and promises. Really, wasn’t it just an elaborate expression of their longing for hope?

We need not read determinism or destiny into these ancient systems. I certainly don’t. I’m not superstitious, and I don’t buy into the idea that the return of any particular animal brings any particular set of conditions. Instead, I’ve come to see each year’s new arrival as a reminder of the choices that we as humans get to make. Instead of harbingers of what will inevitably come, I view the twelve as avatars of what could be. 

Detail from “Scene of Power and Grandeur,” Hu Zaobin, in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, early 20th century

The tiger embodies courage; maybe we can learn to be braver and not to yield to unhealthy fear. The tiger is loyal and strong; maybe we can find in its character an example of loving solidarity and mutual care. The tiger can adapt to the unexpected, and I love this story about Amur, a tiger who was supposed to eat Timur, a goat who had been released into his pen as live prey but was somehow won over, at least temporarily, by its fearlessness; maybe we can be wiser, I guess, about how we treat our friends!  The tiger roars in the face of evil, and in one of the old legends of Chinese mythology, the Jade Emperor summoned this fierce protector to defeat an onslaught of destructive demons; maybe we can hear the summons to work for all that’s right and good, not just for ourselves but also for our neighbors, our communities, and our world.

Of course someone might say that the tiger is also brutal and vicious. To which I’d reply: Buddy, it’s a metaphor—stretch it far enough and it will break. 

I hope that this coming year will bring you and yours much joy and every good thing. May you find courage, loyalty, and strength. May you cultivate loving solidarity, mutual care, and relational wisdom. May you roar in the face of evil and become an ever-better neighbor and friend.

What I’ve Been Writing: I mentioned a couple months ago that I’d been in Tahiti on a reporting trip. That story is out now. It’s the cover story for the February issue of  Travel+Leisure. I always prefer reading long-form pieces in print, but you can read it online here.

I focused my story on Polynesian culture—and I intentionally centered Polynesian voices. Though I interviewed people who had moved from all over the world to live and work in French Polynesia, it felt important to amplify the stories and reflections of the descendants of the islands’ original settlers. Receiving their testimonies moved me deeply. While travel can at times be reckless and damaging, these folks also explained to me that responsible tourism has not only helped rekindle their love for their own culture but also provided material support for its rejuvenation.

In that sense, travel, whether a quick vacation or a more extended sojourn in another land, can be a win-win. It can honor those who call that place home and it can bless those who are just passing through. For both, it has the power to broaden our imaginations and deepen our respect for tradition, diversity, and the beautiful world around us. 

While in French Polynesia, I got to stay at the Brando, an extraordinary resort on the Tetiaroa atoll. Care for the environment as well as for Polynesian culture is a core value of the resort’s operators. “We’re not perfect by any means,” one staffer told me, “but we’re trying.” At the Brando, that shines through, from the ingenious (and expensive) technology that pumps seawater from deep in the ocean to cool the place to the investments it has made in scientific research as well as environmental conservation to the food and drink it serves.

The beach at the Brando

Touring its kitchens delighted the cooking geek in me, and I loved talking with Pierre Lecorne, the resort’s executive chef, and Anthony Lestriez, its pastry chef. Both are from France, and both previously worked in the famed kitchens of Paris’s finest hotels—Lecorne at the George V and Plaza Athénée, Lestriez at the Ritz. Cooking in French Polynesia has changed their craft. “We have learned about eating with the seasons. In France, we’ve lost this. You can eat strawberries and tomatoes any day,” Lecorne said as we sat on the beach, shaded by the palm trees. “It’s not just a story. Once you taste a product and you know how and where it was grown, it becomes about love and respect.” Lestriez added: “It can’t just be about what you want to eat. It’s also understanding what nature gives you.”

Of course both cooks and eaters have begun to rediscover these truths at home as well as abroad, but sometimes we do need a change of setting to help change our minds. Lecorne told me that living and cooking in French Polynesia have also transformed how he understands the concept of luxury. “You don’t need gold and vermeil and crystal. Here, it’s different. It’s going to visit the bees with the beekeeper. It’s having dinner--and the fish is from right there, in that lagoon,” he said, nodding over the shoulder toward the crystalline waters. Lestriez added that, where lavish hospitality used to be imported Russian caviar and the legendary chickens of Bresse, “now it’s our own garden. Of course Europe has honey, and it’s very good. But it can stay there. Because we have our own honey, being made on our own atoll.”

Ah, that honey! To my palate, it was pleasantly and subtly but surprisingly tart, adding welcome complexity to the expected sweetness. Unlike other varieties, it rarely crystallizes when chilled. 

I don’t have a sweet tooth; I’d much rather have a bag of chips or a handful of popcorn than a piece of chocolate or a cupcake. But I could eat “Le Miel,” an ethereal dessert created by Lestriez to celebrate that honey, every single day. It’s one of the most extraordinary dishes I’ve ever eaten—an aria in cream, vanilla, and, of course, the honey. As Lestriez explained, “It’s what we call in French a trompe l’oeil”—a trick of the eye. What looks like a madeleine, that fat little sponge cake of Proustian fame, “is not a madeleine,” he said. In France, madeleines are often made with honey, and Lestriez sought to recreate that flavor in his version. His “madeleine” has a base of biscuit made with Tahitian vanilla, a layer of creme anglaise infused with honey, and then a vanilla mousse; it’s formed in madeleine molds, frozen, and then painted with cocoa butter and natural dye to look like a traditional, golden madeleine. It’s served with three clouds of exquisite delight: a fromage-blanc ice cream, a honey cream, and a vanilla-mascarpone cream.

“Le Miel”

In “Le Miel,” there’s a story that will remain largely invisible to most diners, a story about Lestriez’s growth not just as a pastry chef but also as a good steward of natural resources. “I used not to care about importing ingredients, because it was normal. I didn’t see the problem,” he said. “I’m starting to understand more how to reduce carbon costs, how to use the ingredients around me.” 

As the chefs have learned, they’ve worked with local farmers to expand the range of what is cultivated and sold; where one fruit supplier used to sell only mango and papaya, they’ve now added guava and soursop. By creating a new market, the Brando’s chefs encourage the growers to understand the possibilities of produce that they might otherwise have undervalued. The kitchen has also experimented with new ways to use local ingredients; in addition to making their own coconut milk, coconut cream, and coconut water, for instance, they take the heart of the coconut to make a coconut “butter.” 

One afternoon, I took a walk through the Brando’s own kitchen garden, where the team has been cultivating more of what they need. The garden currently supplies about a tenth of the kitchen’s produce, but the goal is to boost that percentage significantly. There are banana, papaya, fig, and citrus trees, as well as peppers and turnips, sweet potatoes and eggplant. They have started to harvest their own vanilla. And they are growing herbs such as basil, dill, and thyme, which are not indigenous to French Polynesia and used to be imported from the United States. Some crops have failed. The soil, which is mostly sand and coral, is poor, so they’ve been amending it with compost and algae.

The Brando has adult tricycles! I wanted to bring mine home, but alas…

Some of the crops have failed or struggled. The tomatoes I saw were shriveled, some of the eggplants dried up. Yet those of us who attempt to plant and grow know that each seed sown is its own expression of hope and every season is a chance to learn anew—lessons about attention, lessons about care, lessons about humility, lessons about what makes for a good and abundant life.

What I’m Reading: The New York Times columnist David Brooks published a long piece featuring the voices of prominent pastors and academics who have pushed back against what he calls the “Trumpification” of white American evangelicalism. It was interesting to read the polarized responses on Twitter (yes, ten thousand grains of salt needed)—some conservatives calling out those quoted as apostates and heretics, and some progressives saying that there can be no redemption for evangelicalism. Where is either form of fundamentalism going to get us? 

I grew up an evangelical. Like any person who has been hurt and shamed in those churches, I can make a long list of harm done. Yet even as I disagree with them on some significant matters, I respect many of the people who are quoted in the piece—and I hope and pray for their success, both individually and in their communities of faith. Those who want simply to burn evangelicalism down might have legitimate reasons for that wish, but it is just that: a wish. 

Fire comes in different forms. It can destroy, but it can also nourish new life. Maybe we can more realistically call for a fire that cleanses but also one that thaws cold piety and warms hearts. Maybe we can pray for a fire that, as with some species of tree, unlocks the seeds of a future generation. Maybe we can encourage these siblings in Christ—because, despite our differences, those of us who claim Christianity ought not to engage in tawdry anathematizing—toward an evangelicalism that is more just and more loving than what we have now. That would be more helpful and more healing, both for those who still find themselves in those pews and for the rest of the world too.

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Enough from me. This is long enough as it is! Tell me what’s on your minds these days.

As always, I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.

With all warmest wishes,
Jeff